


On the Bones of Giants

by semele



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 02:36:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17256032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: Modern AU. Bellamy and Raven are strangers who are renting neighboring rooms in the same hostel during a vacation in Rome.





	On the Bones of Giants

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. Welcome to the next installment of "I guess I only have a history degree to write unnecessary stuff about Bellamy Blake being a nerd".
> 
> I prepared a bit of background for those who are interested, but since it's in no way necessary to enjoy the story, I relegated it to the notes at the end. Read at your own peril, and whether you do or you don't -- happy New Year! :)
> 
> Last but not least - a shout-out to Shortitude and Raiindust for brainstorming this with me months ago. Thank you so much for all your help, and I hope we all agree that there needs to be more of these!

To Bellamy’s great disappointment, Rome isn’t exactly what it promised to be.

Okay, fine, he is being unfair. He pretty much should’ve expected crowds, and heat, and aggressively unhelpful road signs. He also knew that going alone would necessarily limit the scope for social interactions, and he should be grateful for that. No one can handle him staring at rocks for three hours. He knows. People tried.

Still, three days in, he is just a tiny bit weary, and lonely enough to start paying attention to strangers, against his better judgement. People-watching is part and parcel of this whole “traveling abroad” experience, he tells himself sternly, and he paid an arm and a leg for this trip. He is going to enjoy every single aspect of it.

In other words: he is in his hostel, listening to a fight his neighbors are having in the next room, and there is nothing he can do not to hear it, so he might as well try to put a positive spin on it.

“Stop making a big deal out of it!” It’s definitely a girl’s voice, and a very annoyed girl for sure. Bellamy can’t exactly place her accent, but there is something a little bit Texas about it.

“Don’t be like that, Raven!” scolds a guy, and he sounds so reasonable and polite in such a sanctimonious way that Bellamy is immediately rooting for the girl.

“I’m sure we can do something we’ll all enjoy in the afternoon,” pipes in another girl. “You can choose…”

“I did choose!” interrupts Raven, even more impatient than before. “I’m tired, I’m overheated, and I’m staying in tomorrow. Stop acting like I’m ruining your holiday, you can do whatever you want! I’m not stopping you, am I?”

Clearly she doesn’t get the answer she wanted, because ten seconds later, Bellamy can hear slamming doors, and some very anxious whispers, too quiet for him to eavesdrop on. And he thought it was awkward when, on his first night here, a couple on the other side of the corridor decided to really go at it in the middle of the night. Important life lesson: hostel walls are universally thin.

***

Shouts and whispers continue way into the night, and it’s awkward enough that in the morning, Bellamy makes sure he hears his neighbors leave before he sticks his nose into the kitchen. He really doesn’t want to stand there and awkwardly make himself a breakfast coffee while they all side-eye each other, and he wonders if he should let them know that he speaks English. As much as he craves company, befriending these particular people sounds like the worst idea he could have.

What he forgets about is that the Texas girl announced loud and clear last night that she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Oh, hi,” he says stupidly when he sees her in the shared kitchen, sitting gloomily over a piece of toast. “Sorry, I thought you guys left for the day. You okay?”

“Peachy. And, yeah. They went to take instagrammable pics of the Colosseum. Or something.”

She looks as pretty as she does ready to slit his throat with the butter knife she’s holding, so he doesn’t waste time scurrying over to the coffee machine. Clearly making conversation with fellow Americans is not on the menu today. And yet he’s been lonely enough those last few days that he decides to try.

“Good luck with that. Five thousand other tourists will have the same idea.”

To his surprise, that seems to get her attention – or at least make her look up at him with a bit less rage.

“So are you one of those guys who are above sightseeing with the rest of the peasants?” 

Bellamy gives her a shrug, and picks up his ready coffee from the machine, trying not to wince. He’s already had time to learn that coffee in this place is atrocious, and this awkward conversation isn’t making it taste any better.

“Nah, history was my minor in college,” he says after the first sip. “I’ve been saving up for this trip for ages, I’m as obnoxious as they get. That five thousand other tourists thing? Learned the hard way, trust me. I almost got trampled by a Vatican stampede yesterday, and it was totally worth it.”

When the girl actually cracks a smile at that, he feels like he won some big prize, maybe climbed a mountain or something. Oh no, he realizes. She is trouble.

“Yeah, well. I hope you enjoy your stampede today,” she says with a bit more kindness, then gets up, her smile faltering slightly. He doesn’t notice that there is a bit of a wobble in her step until she passes by him to put her half-eaten toast in the bin, but it’s enough for a few things from yesterday’s overheard fight to become crystal clear. “I’m gonna go read a book on the balcony. Or something.”

“Hey, did you guys buy your Colosseum tickets online, before you got here?” he asks impulsively. The girl gives him a suspicious look.

“Yeah. Why?”

Go ahead, Blake, he tells himself. Look casual. Do _not_ try to check out her legs.

“Nothing, just… That ticket gives you access to a pretty cool place, and not many people go. I was gonna go there today, to take it easy and recover from the stampede, so I thought I’d ask if you wanted to come. Sounds like a cooler place to sit down with a book then a balcony, and, well. You’ve got the ticket already.”

The silence as she considers his question is probably just a few seconds, but to Bellamy, it feels like full five minutes. This girl here? Definitely trouble.

“Alright, but just to be clear. If you try to post me on Instagram and pretend you hooked up with me or something, I will cut you. Deal?”

Deal.

***

Bellamy takes care to put an extra bottle of water and some snacks in his backpack before he emerges from his room, careful to hide just how jittery he is. Jesus, what has he done? Did he just invite a girl he doesn’t even know to hang out with him for the day, just because there was something sad in her eyes about being left behind by her friends, whom she told to leave her behind? It’s gonna go exactly as well as all his other romantic impulses, all because he immediately decided that he’s going to get along with her, and based on what? Three minutes of barking at each other followed by a smile? His sister was right; he shouldn’t have decided to take this holiday alone.

Still, too late. He already invited her, and they both have tickets pre-booked for today. If it really goes so terribly wrong, they can just split up and avoid each other in Palatine Hill. From what he read about it, it’s definitely big enough for that.

“I didn’t even ask you where we’re going” says the girl when they’re on their way to the metro, and Bellamy can’t say he isn’t grateful for how she breaks the awkward silence. “Some museum?”

“No, it’s an archeological park. It’s basically where the emperors and other rich people used to live. In short, a lot of grass and some rocks in between. I’ve got a blanket, I was gonna perch myself somewhere high, spread out a map, and finally figure out how it was all built. I remember one of my teachers saying that not many people bother to go up there, so I figured… If you wanna read a book, might as well do it on the bones of giants. Right?”

The look she gives him in response is a bit strange, and intense enough to make him start staring at his own shoes. 

“You’re weird,” she says, shaking her head, and maybe it’s his own wishful thinking, but it sounds like a compliment. “Anyway. So if history was your minor, what was the major?”

College talk, as it turns out, lasts them almost all the way to the Circo Massimo station, and by the time they get off the train, Bellamy learns a few things. The girl’s name is Raven, yes, and she is indeed from Texas, but she hasn’t lived there in years, too busy pursuing a fancy MIT degree he doesn’t fully understand. It has to do with labs, and space, and metals, and, given the way she doesn’t attempt to help his obvious confusion, a state secret or seven. Compared to that, the tiny not-for-profit he works for doesn’t sound impressive at all, but to Raven’s credit, she grills him on it nonetheless, and fakes interest so well he almost buys it. It seems like being outside does wonders to her mood, and by the time they wave their printed-out tickets at the gate to Palatine Hill, there is barely any hostility left in her. 

Without any furniture obscuring the view, it’s blatantly obvious that Raven wears some sort of a knee brace, but the wobble she had in her step when getting up from the chair is barely visible on solid pavement, especially when she is the one to dictate the pace. Still, Bellamy takes his time with the map at the entrance, and makes sure to avoid the steepest approach, and by the time they reach the benches in one of the higher points, she is a little bit winded, but doesn’t seem to be in pain – or if she is, it’s forgotten in a blink, because…

“Oh, fuck me,” she mutters as she takes in the view for the first time. They’re between the imperial palaces, walls three, four stories tall, magnificent marbles conquered by grass and weeds, so quiet and serene even Bellamy has to remind himself just how much blood and less noble fluids once soaked into these stones.

“You like it?” he probes, and when she turns back to him, she looks like she’s been robbed.

“I can’t believe these assholes made me crawl through three museums yesterday to look at fucking brush strokes, when this was right here. Can we stay all day?”

“I don’t see why not.”

They find a quiet corner by the Stadium of Domitian, disturbed by nothing but the wind and an occasional tour guide that Bellamy tries to avoid hearing, because it’s rude to roll his eyes so hard at someone. He has his own story to tell here, and since Raven makes no move to reach for her book, he unfolds his map so that she can see it as well, and starts working on it out loud. 

“This is actually one of the newer parts – we can go later to see where the original village was, house of Romulus and all that. Look here, see? One little village here on the slope, and then there was another one on the neighboring hill, with a swampy valley in between. At some point, the two villages started working together, and they decided to drain…”

“Drain the swamp?” she interrupts with a cheeky grin, absolutely pleased with herself, and Bellamy does roll his eyes, manners be damned.

“In my defence, when I studied this in college ten years ago, that was a perfectly innocent sentence,” he tries, fighting to keep a straight face, but then Raven fails, and so does he, and they both laugh hard enough to make at least four old ladies give them very judgmental looks.

They end up moving camp a few times through the day, whenever something grabs their interest, and Bellamy collects a few more nuggets of information here and there. Raven came to Rome with a group of friends, lured by the promise of rest, and culture, and romance, and some great food to top it all off, but within the year that passed between them booking the trip, and the trip actually starting, a few things happened. Namely: Raven’s boyfriend broke up with her, then promptly got together with one of his friends, who happened to be on the trip as well. 

“They’re all his friends, you know?” she says as they’re strolling through the House of Augustus. “Some art club, something, something. Started out as a Meetup for amateour painters who never went to art school, they’d grab their watercolors or whatever, then go sketch someone’s tits for three hours. Not that I don’t like art, I do, but there is only so much tagging along like awkward duck while they discuss shadowing and stuff. Right?”

What she doesn’t say: her injured leg, whatever’s wrong with it, has been killing for the last two days thanks to the merciless mixture of cobbled streets and slowly trawling through museums with nowhere to sit down and rest, and the rest of her group couldn’t give less of a shit.

Since she doesn’t say anything about being tired, but the lines on her forehead tell a whole different story, he is the one who suggests hunting down some lunch after a cursory look at the Forum, and if his original plan was to spend two hours in the afternoon comparing basilicas, he parts with it with a surprising lack of regret.

It turns out Raven is a whiz when it comes to spotting tourist traps, and after a few minutes of staring at her phone like she is cracking the Enigma, she leads them to a quaint little restaurant in a small street Bellamy would never be able to find again, then rattles at the Italian waiter in Spanish until they understand each other perfectly. She doesn’t as much as show Bellamy the menu; just asks, in a commanding voice, if he is either Muslim or vegetarian, and when he shakes his head, she shushes him with a single gesture, and takes over completely.

When his food arrives fifteen minutes later, it’s the best carbonara he’s ever tasted.

Raven becomes even more talkative after lunch, as if eager to take over after he was her guide for half a day, and he is charmed enough to let her pull him around. They have ice cream on the steps of an old church, and since he admits he lives in Boston as well, they spend a good hour bashing New York mercilessly, then they move on to coffee and carry on the abuse until Bellamy’s belly hurts from laughing, and he has to beg Raven to stop, which she doesn’t until he promises to bribe her with even more ice cream. Just to change the subject, he tries to tell her a bit about the ancient layout of the streets, but all that gets him is a fond groan.

“Holy shit, you’re for real,” she says, and nudges him with her good knee as she knocks back the rest of her coffee. “I still had, like, a little bit of suspicion that the whole history nerd act was a super elaborate pick-up line, because, no offence, you’re way too pretty to be this nerdy, but no. You are really exactly this nerdy. How?”

“So you think I’m pretty?” he teases, strangely warm under his collar, and when she mock-punches him in the shoulder, it takes a lot of effort to not notice just how kissable she seems right now.

***

Raven never suggests anything resembling plans for tomorrow, so Bellamy follows her lead, not wanting to seem pushy. This is enough, he tells himself sternly. You met a stranger, and it was a wonderful day, but fun is over now. Raven had a fight with her friends, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to drop their asses and join your grand tour. Get a grip, Blake.

His plan for the next day was to see one of the art museums, and pay at least some lip service to the Renaissance, but with the energy from yesterday still buzzing under his skin, the idea of pensively admiring oil on canvas sounds like absolute hell. Instead, he sets himself a murderous tourist pace, the Colosseum, then Capitol and San Angelo, with three heavy books in his backpack and an actual notebook of research questions. This is what he came here for, right? He is going to science the hell out of ancient Rome if it’s the last thing that he does. 

By the time he crawls back to the hostel, he is dead on his feet, and so sweaty he probably needs not one but two showers. So, logically, there is a knock on his door as soon as he takes off his shoes.

“Sorry to barge in,” says Raven sheepishly, and she seems, somehow, smaller than yesterday; smaller and wetter, like a small bird caught in a rain. “I thought… I wasn’t sure if you’ve left yet. Do you… I was wondering if you wanted to take an evening walk. I bailed on the others after lunch, they aren’t back yet, and I’m all cabin-fever-y, but everyone and their mom told me this was a bad place to wander on your own after dark, so I thought… Wanna come?”

He doesn’t. He really doesn’t. He barely has enough energy to climb up his bed now. So, logically, he puts his shoes back on, downs a glass of water, and goes with her without questions.

“What did you do today?” she asks stiffly once they’re outside, and her tone sounds so jarring he twists to look at her.

“Way too much,” he says simply, and sticks his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “How about you?”

“Some museum or other. Look, I… Shit, this is so tacky I judge myself. Look, we came back so late yesterday that they found out I was out, and today I got a whole mountain of hurt doe eyes, mixed up with teasing about handsome Italian strangers. And I’m mad at myself, because yesterday was so great, and I let them ruin it, and I just kept thinking… Might as well have kissed you.”

It takes her exactly two seconds to realize that she implied that kissing him would’ve ruined things, but that’s time enough for Bellamy to start laughing hard enough to feel something loosen in his tired muscles. God, this girl…

“I meant…” she tries, flustered, but he steps in front of her, stopping her in her tracks and her words.

“Don't you dare. I've been waiting all day for someone to make me laugh.” He doesn't quite have the nerve to stroke her face, not like this, in the middle of the street, but he does hook his fingers with hers, needing to touch her in some way.

“Thanks, I guess?”

“You're welcome. So, are you going to kiss me? I mean, to be fair, I do smell like a changing room in a dingy gym, so, at your own peril. You could also…”

Apparently it's her turn to interrupt him, because she steps in bravely, and gives him a deep kiss, no fucking around. It's the kind of kiss that promises seven more to come, and Bellamy ends up with his hands stroking Raven's back, pulling her in, closer, closer, holy shit. That happened.

“How much longer are you here?” she asks, face still inches from his.

“Another week.”

“Good.”

***

It probably shouldn’t surprise him that she doesn’t spend the night in his room, but what is a little unexpected is that he isn’t too disappointed when she goes back straight to her room after their walk. He can still feel that kiss tingling on his lips when he showers and changes into pajamas, and there is a promise of more there, yes, but there is no rush. They both live in Boston, don’t they? It’s not like they can never see each other again after the week is out.

They never say she’d be going with him the next day, not in these exact words, but she joins him in the kitchen when he’s halfway through his terrible morning coffee, and acts like this was the plan all along. 

Of course then, the confidence runs out before she has time to as much as butter her toast.

“Sorry, I know you have your nerdy trip thing, so… Just tell me honestly if I’m gonna slow you down or something. With the whole…” She gestures at her leg. “And the other stuff. I mean, if I’m gonna bother you, tell me outright, okay?”

“It’s fine, Raven. Besides, I’ve been told I’m too pretty to be so nerdy.”

The truth is, even though she definitely slows him down, it feels like he’s seeing things better with Raven at his side. They go exploring the piazzas that day, because they mark the city like scars of old stadiums that they replaced, and between Bellamy telling Raven stories about the past, and Raven telling him stories about the present, it all comes together neatly; the Rome that was and the Rome that is, with a bit more forgiveness than what he is used to.

“I imagined this so much that I kind knew I’d be disappointed, you know?” he says once they sit down for ice-cream again, thanks to Raven’s uncanny ability to google incredible food. “It’s just… There is so little left. We make such a big deal out of it, you half-expect to still be walking the same streets when you come here, but no. Not really.”

“Yeah, it’s not like that, is it?” she says pensively, eyes fixed somewhere in the distance. “More… How did you call it the other day? Like sitting on the bones of giants.”

He lets out a quiet laugh, and it would be much more dignified if he was having these profound thoughts while smoking a lonely cigarette, instead of while trying to not let chocolate orange ice cream drip on his fingers, but here it goes. Take that, Plautus.

“Are they really giants, though? Or do we just say they are because we hope that this means we’ll also be able to trick other people into remembering us after we die?”

Maybe this was just a town, a town like many others, and the people who lived here got lucky. Maybe they were no different than the town he grew up in, full of petty quarrels and small ambitions, made better by the occasional spark of kindness that's easily forgotten, even if it’s exactly the part most worth remembering. Bellamy isn’t even sure why he is disappointed, when he’s known for ages that there was nothing so special about the Romans, no matter how highly they regarded themselves. It’s been a while since he learned that the stories he grew up on, the stories he loved and cherished, aren’t much more than fairy tales for privileged schoolboys, to teach them how to go out into the world and conquer what wasn’t theirs. He didn't come here to find his heroes. He came because he’d hoped that if he felt this elusive, lost world on his own skin, in all its ugly, accidental glory, he would be able to understand better.

“Can’t help you with that,” says Raven with a bit of an apologetic smile, and when she leans to rest her shoulder against his a little bit, he feels like he indeed understood _something_ better this week. “Was it worth it, though? I mean, the trip?”

“Oh yeah. It was. Hey, Raven? Would now be a bad time to as for your phone number?”

***

She ends up in his bed that day, because of course she does. For all that they didn’t want to rush too much, they're not romantic, not in the patient way that teaches you to delay pleasure until it becomes a sophisticated, elaborate dish. Instead, they come to their hostel with skin still warm from the afternoon sun, and they make it simple: clothes on the floor, a pack of condoms on the bed, and long, lazy strokes as they try to silence uncertainty, will this last or will it not, hope rearing its ugly head as if it had nothing better to do.

Afterwards, they get dressed again, then go have some pizza like the tourist cliches they are; all that’s missing is waiters suddenly breaking into a cheesy Italian song as Bellamy and Raven sip their wine and laugh at something objectively stupid.

When he sees Raven in Boston two weeks later, they end up cooking dinner at home, both of them too broke after their vacation to be able to go out for quite a while, but maybe that’s what makes things easier. 

For a while there, they think of nothing but the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Everything Bellamy says about ancient Rome in this story is, to the best of my knowledge, true. Palatine Hill was one of the seven legendary hills of Rome, and it has, among other things, a shrine that the Romans themselves venerated as the grave of Romulus. It was a prime piece of real estate in ancient times, inhabited by multiple senatorial families, and eventually the imperial court -- you can still visit the house of Augustus. Today Palatine is an archeological site right next to Forum Romanum and the Colosseum, and tickets to all three are sold as a bundle, no way to opt out of any of the 3 components. The result is that anyone who goes to the Colosseum can go to Palatine, but very few people actually do, because they haven't heard about it and don't care to see it. 
> 
> Stadium of Domitian looks like this: [click!](https://i2.wp.com/www.romaexperience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Domitiansstadium.jpg?resize=461%2C307&ssl=1)
> 
> In case you haven't guessed -- yup, the "drained swamp" Bellamy and Raven have a laugh about is actually Forum Romanum.
> 
> Plautus was an ancient Roman writer of comedies, known for his irreverent humor.
> 
> "Sitting on the bones of giants" is a world play on a concept that originally appeared in medieval Europe; the idea is that people are able to achieve wonderful things by building on top of what previous generations left us -- like dwarves being able to see the horizon because they're standing on the shoulders of giants. I don't know why this visual is stuck in my head when I think about visiting Rome, but it is, and I'm not going to fight it.


End file.
